What are the key missions for Space XS next Starship launch?
And also how many launches from Kennedy Space Center at NASA
does SpaceX want to do for the Starship in the future?
We'll find out. They've successfully stacked
Starship and the booster at Starbase Texas.
So the next step, this is a fit test right now.
So the booster and the ship are mated together on the launchpad
and they're testing all the internals, the electronics, the
plumbing, everything that's inside of the Starship, but also
the ground systems, everything that makes Starship and the
booster work for the flight of IFT 4.
Now once this is all done, once the fit check is all done, and
once they make sure that all the systems are go, they will remove
the ship from the booster and maybe they're going to take it
back to the Bay and do some work on it.
Now some of this work is probably going to be some heat
tiles. There is about 7 I believe heat
tiles missing from the Starship right now and that's OK Right
now they're just fit testing it and they're going to do the
final tiling before they stack it up one more time before the
flight of IFT 4. Now, in the background, SpaceX
is working with the FAA and they're working on closing out
items for the IFT 3 report. Now, the incident report is
important because everything that happened with IFT 3,
everything that went kind of wrong with IFT 3, they have to
fix that before they launch IFT 4 Starship.
So what are those things? We're not exactly sure.
SpaceX hasn't really released any information about that, so
your guess is as good as everybody else on the Internet,
including mine. But SpaceX and the FAA are
working hand in hand to make sure that all of those items get
closed out before IFT 4. Now, what's going to be
happening during IFT 4 as well? They know that the booster will
probably make it back down to the Gulf of Mexico because IFT
3, they were very close. So SpaceX is confident that the
IFT 4 booster will land in the Gulf of Mexico doing a soft
landing. It's going to be a virtual
landing on the landing pad and the catch arms.
So the launchpad, as you see here at Starbase, Texas, those
arms will kind of virtually catch the booster as it lands in
the Gulf of Mexico. And that will be hopefully the
last time they do a virtual landing of Starship before they
actually land it back at Starbase, according to Elon
Musk. Now, Elon Musk has promised some
stuff in the past, and we all know this Elon is kind of one of
those. He's a sales guy, right?
So I trust the guy. I believe in him.
But he wants to do a landing of the booster at Starbase, Texas
for IFT 5. If this works out well in the
Gulf of Mexico. Let me know in the comments if
you think that's a good idea. Do you think the ship or sorry,
the booster, do you think the booster could fly back to
Starbase and land on the launchpad, on the arms like this
right here, land like that for IFT 5?
It's pretty close. I mean IFT 5 could be a few
months away because IFT 4 will probably be the beginning of
June. So if they could nail this IFT 4
landing booster landing in the Gulf of Mexico, then there's a
possibility that they go for it for IFT 5.
Let me know in the comments down below.
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So let's get back to the news of IFT 4 and what's going to be
happening. There's another thing that's
happening with IFT 4 that didn't happen with IFT 3.
Didn't really completely happen and we think that's going to
work out well this time. It wasn't a complete success, I
should say. I have T3.
They tested the Bay door that they're gonna be launching
Starlink satellites out of now. They opened it pretty well.
It looked like everything went well, but it looked like there
was a little hitch on the way back in so that the the opening
was like this. He has it open up and when it
came back in it was like chik chik, chik chik, give a little
chik, chik, chik on the way back in.
So when they were closing it. So it seems like they might be
working on that in the future as well.
I FT 4 perfect time because if they want to launch I FT-5 and
actually land the booster at Starbase, they might do that as
the big thing for I FT-5. We're going to talk about I FT
four's big thing in a minute, but another huge thing for I FT
five could be Starlink satellites.
Now IFT 4's big thing is pretty big.
They're gonna virtually land the booster in the Gulf of Mexico
hopefully. So I guess there's two big big
big things. The booster landing in the Gulf
of Mexico softly and not doing a flight termination system style
explosion over the Gulf of Mexico, but also the Starship
itself. The ship re entering the
atmosphere and not burning up. Elon Musk has stated that that
is the big deal for this mission.
So could they maybe land the Starship?
All signs point to know that it's going to hopefully get back
through the atmosphere, but they're going to FTS this thing
before it hits the ground or let it hit the hit the water.
Sorry, not the ground, but hit the water in the ocean and let
it sink. And in my last episode, we
talked about what could happen to the ship itself when it lands
in the ocean. What would happen to the ship?
Does it just sink? Does it float for a while?
How do we protect this thing while it's out in the ocean?
Well, it's more than likely going to sink within the first
hour. Being out there, there's gonna
be holes all over the thing. Think about it.
Engines holes, there's ducts holes.
They could have TS this thing too.
So there's a, there's a plan in place by SpaceX and by, you
know, the the government bodies to protect this while it sinks.
Then when it sinks, it's going to be at the bottom of the
ocean, so no one's going to go dig it up and pull it up to the
top. They're going to make sure that
nobody does that, and they're going to make sure that nobody
gets the engines, the Raptor engines.
And if they do, SpaceX is already working on the next
version of Raptor engines. So even if they do get these
ones, SpaceX will have the next version ready.
By the time they learn about these engines, SpaceX will have
another modified version that's even better.
So it's going to take a little while for that to happen.
Anyway, the pool of Starship from the bottom of the ocean
would take a while. So if they get this completely
nailed and they launch Starlink satellites for IFT 5, I believe
IFT six other star like satellites and they're going to
continue working on the the mission which is mission
critical here is Artemis. They have to get a Starship to
the Moon to work with NASA for the Artemis program and all of
these things that they're doing now.
It's paramount that they land a booster every single time.
And when they land this booster, they can reuse the booster to
fuel more starships, because they're gonna do in orbit
fueling of a Starship and they're gonna need 10s of these
things. Maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen.
Who knows? Yet They haven't tested it yet,
so they're not exactly 100% sure what's going to be happening.
It's sort of like a Starship. You don't know exactly what's
gonna happen when you get out there in the wild.
So NASA is set anywhere between 10 and 20 of the refuelling
tankers, refuelling tanks. And there's the possibility Elon
said about 10. So Elon is always optimistic and
he always has to sell this as the best thing ever because
that's what he does the best. He's a good sales guy.
He's also a great engineer. So don't get me wrong there,
he's really great at that. But the fact that SpaceX needs
to do this within the next 5 launches, they need to start
flying tankers. So by IFT 10, I believe they're
gonna start flying a version of a Starship that could be a
tanker. I just give it a few more flies
and I believe they could they could pull that off.
It's gonna be a while though. They still have some time too.
You know the Artemis program, Artemis 3, probably not gonna
launch till 20302020292030. So they have 5 four to six years
to get this done. And you know, I I think if they
continue at the rate that they're going now, they could
get an Artemis ship into orbit where they transfer people,
probably Polaris program within the next few years, you know,
three years or so. They could get people into a
Starship and they would dock with a Starship with a Dragon
capsule, of course. And they'd load people in the
Starship just to check it out, to make sure everything works
right, make sure that people can survive in it, basically like a
mini space station. So how cool is that?
Yeah, they're working towards that.
So let me know what you think about IFT 4.
Also, there was some information from a a a document that was
released lately. Just recently a document was
released that was from the federal government, from the
Federal Register. There's a proposed action from
the FAA vehicle operator license to SpaceX at Kennedy Space
Center. This is a wild thing.
Think of it the it's Starbase. Right now, SpaceX is possibly
looking at 5 launches per year. Only 5 launches.
They need 100 launches, according to Gwynn Shotwell.
To put people in this thing, to launch people in this thing,
right? And in 2019, the FAA and SpaceX
works worked together to do an environmental study at Kennedy
Space Center so SpaceX could launch starships.
And everything was good. They're all ready to go.
And they were ready to launch that version of Starship in
2019. Whatever that version was, the
scope of that Starship has changed dramatically since then.
So the FAA, SpaceX, are working together now for a a new
proposed lost launch license, vehicle operator license at the
Kennedy Space Center and also an environmental review of
Starship. Now, the real kicker here is
that SpaceX said that there's a possibility they could do 44
Starship Super Heavy launches per year.
Launches may occur during the day or the night in each
Starship. Super Heavy Orbital launch would
include either landing the Super Heavy booster in LC39A or
downrange in the Atlantic Ocean on a drone ship, or expending
the booster in the Atlantic Ocean no closer than
approximately 5 nautical miles off the coast.
Starship could also land on at LC39 or on a drone ship, or be
expanded in the high seas between 55° S latitude, 55° N
latitude. And SpaceX would continue to
launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions at LC39A while Starship
Super Heavy is operational. So they're going to continue
launching everything from from LLC39A while doing the Starship
stuff. This is gonna be a very busy
launchpad. So they go on to say.
The FDA goes on to say the potential environmental impacts
of all proposed construction and operational activities,
including those from launch and landing, will be analyzed in the
new report. So they're going to
environmental impact study. It's going to be air quality,
biological resources including fish, wildlife and plants,
climate, coastal resources, Department of Transportation
Act, Section 4F, farm lands, hazardous materials, solid
waste, pollution prevention, historical architecture,
archaeological and cultural resources, land use, natural
resources and energy supply, noise and noise compatible land
use. The list goes on and on and on
and on. It's a huge list of things that
the FAA has to go through. So this is going to be an
ongoing operation for SpaceX and the FAA to work together to get
this done, because if SpaceX wants to launch Starship for the
Artemis program, they need to get this cleared.
The HLS program is paramount. It's so important to the future
of spaceflight and to the future of NASA that they need to get
this done. And this scope hopefully isn't
that bad because SpaceX has made a bunch of changes to the
Starship, but they can lean on what the environmental impact
study that they had at Starbase and look at that information
for, you know, some data. It's not going to be exactly the
same because of course, Starbase and Florida are definitely not
the same thing. They're near parallel, not the
same thing, though, not even close.
So the FAA has to make sure that SpaceX is all good down there.
So that's about it. That's all we have for right
now. Everybody, please take a second.
Hit the subscribe button and the like button.
Let me know in the comments down below what you think about IFT 4
and also 44 launches. That's incredible.
All right. Thanks, everybody.
Take care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you in the
next one.